TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1145 Environmental Accidents: Personal Injury and Public Responsibility. By Richard H. Gaskins. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. Pp. xiv + 459; notes, index. $44.95 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). This a complex, sophisticated, and difficult book. Richard Gaskins has utilized law, economics, politics, and moral philosophy to propose a new approach to what he calls “environmental accidents.” He sees environmental accidents as a kind of social disease for which society must take collective responsibility. He documents in detail the prob lems of both legal theory and the judicial system in dealing with certain kinds of accidents and proposes both more strenuous regula tion and social compensation for the accident victim. He recognizes that his call for a political solution seems muted by the times, yet he prefers the political to the legal solutions. Gaskins’s frustration with the legal system is evident throughout Environmental Accidents. The problem of proving a specific injury, caused by a specific defendant, under circumstances that render the defendant liable, is a daunting one for most plaintiffs. Whether from a legal, political, or social point of view, society has to decide who will bear the cost of injuries. Gaskins’s approach is to separate the question of compensation from that of causation and award compensation for injuries without focusing on the cause. He rejects the suggestion that the payment of damages acts as an appropriate deterrent to injury-causing activity. Gaskins assumes that a regulatory model will come into play to deal with technological hazards. However, the regulatory system has to know what products will cause hazards, and who to control. Gaskins offers no prescription in these areas. Certainly, given products such as diethylstilbestrol (DES), the Daikon Shield, and all-terrain vehicles, a greater degree of skepticism toward the efficacy of regulation was warranted. However, as a practical matter the book is limited to the problem of compensation for environmental accidents. Gaskins soon introduces a substantial ambiguity: Are environmental accidents only those injuries statistically linked to preexisting events, or are they all of the hazards of modern environments? Case studies in the book include “vaccines, asbestos, Agent Orange, medical services, defective or dangerous products, toxic wastes, nuclear power, workplace inju ries, and occupational diseases” (p. 7). “The central difficulty with these cases is their essentially statistical reality, as constructed by epidemiological research” (p. 23). The critical difference between the epidemiological and other proofs of injury is our knowledge of causation. With some products we know after the injury how it was caused and by whom; with others we simply do not know. Gaskins mixes the two by downplaying the role of causation. Limited to situations where an injury is inflicted by technology on an individual who does not change the rate of injury, Gaskins’s hook is a rich source of concepts and ideas; the combination of legal, moral, 1146 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE and political thinking is a refreshing change from the typical eco nomic approach to tort law. However, the damages incurred by the victims of environmental injuries are limited in Gaskins’s proposal to medical expenses, income maintenance, and rehabilitation expenses. This would perpetuate the system found in some states, where it is manifestly cheaper to kill people than to injure them. Gaskins’s attitude toward other injuries may be reflected by a statement that the swine flu cases included a “number of pleadings seeking damages for loss of consortium and other arcane injuries.” Since loss of consortium is a derivative action by the spouse of an injured person for the loss of sexual and social relations, Gaskins must feel that either such claims should not be recoverable as a matter of principle, or that sacrifice of such claims should be part of the trade-off in obtaining simpler and faster compensation for environ mental injuries. This point deserved more exploration. The book seems to lack historical perspective. The early problem of steamboat boiler explosions and the key 1916 case rejecting privity, MacPhearson v. Buick Motor Cars, are not explored. The early toxic substance case of the radium-dial painters is never mentioned. Gaskins seems to imply that the problems of an industrial society sprang full-blown on...